investigations on becoming vertical – Summer 2019, phase 1
Monday 29th July – Marina Collard with Willa Faulkner, Becky Horne, Maude Zimmerli.
Recapturing and reconnecting with a research project undertaken with MA Performance Practice (Dance) students from Ambedkar University Delhi, India. Three weeks of investigating practice led to a studio performance integrating video projections and live performance concerned with the displacement of the horizontality and verticality of the image and the live body. Two free standing screens were moved by the dancers as a way of disrupting the continuity of the space and to affect the scale of the image. The work is concerned with location and perspective. Where we find ourselves and how we position ourselves in relation to an unstable environment both politically and emotionally is addressed, considered and abstracted.
These few days focus on the physical enquiry, what it is to be vertical and horizontal and everything that is in between. The origins of which came form the series of photos of the horizon placed beside each other filling up the side of the cube (4mins into the edit), failing to line up, causing the instability and shifting horizons.
We lay down with our feet parallel on the glass wall with our legs straight. Actively standing and lying at the same time. Re-orienting melting into the floor and the wall, disappearing into the liquidity of the glass. We danced and allowed the day to be what it was. Landing in. Re-arranged. Curious of the potential.
Tuesday 30th July – Marina Collard with Willa Faulkner, Becky Horne, Lauren Potter.
We lay standing. We did this for specific durations. We did this together. We danced. The time and activity which occupies the space between standing/lying and dancing is a complex process of recalibration, re-orientation, coming up with new understandings of becoming vertical.
The disappearing shoulder blade. The sleeve of the bones/bone structures. The search for coherence and independence. The parts communicate with ease but they are not stuck together.
Wednesday 31st July – Marina Collard with Willa Faulkner, Becky Horne, Lauren Potter.
We talked and I set some context; shifting horizons, becoming vertical, perspective as distance, speed, duration and slowness, space between the horizontal and the vertical, Richard Serra.
We let the weight of our head be supported by our partner. we discovered something about the space in between becoming vertical and becoming horizontal. It’s not falling. It’s not leading. It’s not holding. It’s not dropping. It is a change of substance, quality and materiality of the body. Different even of orientation.
We lay standing. We plugged our feet in. We did this for specific durations. We did this together. We danced. Day 3 is a delicious accumulation of experiences and integration of information. All of it present, all of it relevant, We’ve landed in.
Thursday 1st August – Marina Collard with Steve Haines.
It’s been a long time since we’ve spent time in a studio and in the potential for and of movement. We lay standing. We plugged our feet in. We did this for specific durations. We did this together. We noticed the significance. The information coming in and its effect. It’s reorganising effect. We moved, we talked, we explored.
We let our head be supported but the other. We noticed the relationship with birth.
Monday 5th August – Marina Collard with Tina Krasevec
We lay standing. We did this for 25 minute duration. We noticed the difference from our June experimentations. We occasionally vocalised our changes. We moved. We felt the layers of recalibration and felt the support from the atmosphere; the change of substance, different physical materiality, quality; the time and activity which occupies the space to witness becoming vertical.
We had a break and did it again. It’s intense. We listened to Derek McCormack on Thinking and moving with atmospheric things. We did this twice. Just the first 15 minutes. Atmosphere as dynamic distribution of feeling, a transition of affect, discrete things that unsettle and surprise thinking, occasions of experience.
Wednesday 7th August – Marina Collard with Tina Krasevec
We lay standing for 25 minute duration. We noticed and occasionally vocalised our changes. We moved. We felt the layers of recalibration and felt the support from the atmosphere. I sat and made notes.
Head rolls up, flying. Face and sternum up to the sky; it’s open and pours beyond verticality. It’s O.K. The self, supported by the space, the vastness. Repeating and doing the same thing. Not trying to be something. Swallowing, absorbing, affecting and affected by the atmosphere.
We lay standing for 15 minute duration. We know this now, it’s familiar and we’re quickly absorbed. Every time is different, rich and nuanced as the familiarity progresses. We take time in the activity which occupies the space in becoming vertical. We comment occasionally. The duration between each vocal reflection is long. As we become vertical this duration diminishes and the voice becomes another limb with which to notice. I sat and made notes.
Human bodies and non-human bodies. Attention distributed. What repeats? Location is limitless. Giving into the space, what is up and what is down has changed, am I vertical. Moving and talking; what experience I say and what I say I experience. The texture of the glass wall is significant.
Filming Day – Marina Collard with Tina Krasevec
It’s cold. The surface of the glass wall is less giving. We try some things out. I’m not sure.
I’ll need to try again and again and again till I understand what it is.